LARRY LITTLE | Game-changing leaps and passes

Usually I don't write about sports, as politics is my preferred contact sport.

Don't worry you politics fans, I will get around to that game after meandering through a football game in Seattle and Black Friday in Silverdale.

But first, let's talk about last Saturday. One of our sons dug deep into his wallet and treated our family to tickets to last Saturday's Apple Cup.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I must reveal that a significant number of those in attendance at that game in our family group were Huskies, and none was a Cougar. I'm neither, but having forked over a lot of tuition money to the University of Washington on behalf of our children who attended there as undergraduates, I do feel a bit like an alumnus.

As the weather on Saturday was unusually mild, I parked in my usual spot for Mariners games — a mile or so south of the stadiums.

I arrived with 40 Chicken McNuggets just before the Huskies scored their first touchdown. Before the next touchdown, our 6-year-old grandson had wolfed down 10 of those pieces.

He and his 8-year-old brother had plenty of opportunities to high-five all of us at each touchdown and field goal. However they both refused to eat the $5 apiece corn-on-the-cobs that seemed the only food obtainable without a 20-minute wait in line.

However the high and the low points of the stadium on-the-field experience occurred fairly closely together.

First the low point. The halftime show by the two bands was so uninspiring and bland that without the high point that came just before, I would have been left in a semi-permanent funk.

Sigh ... it's tough when you have memories of inspiring halftime shows during football games before America, and especially its men, became afraid of themselves.

However, as all those Husky fans watching in person or on TV will recall, there was a 2011 Apple Cup moment that inspired. Even more so than the occasional fourth-and-a-few-yards gamble that can turn around the momentum of a game, like when Husky Kasen Williams hurdled high in the air over a Cougar defender, and more than just a few extra yards were achieved.

To me that individual leap changed the game.

In even a greater sense, I was inspired earlier during that Thanksgiving time frame by a collective effort — the camaraderie and cooperative spirit shown by those who camped out along with a friend of mine in front of Best Buy in Silverdale for about 35 hours before the store opening on midnight before Black Friday.

I was highly skeptical when I talked with them at the beginning of that 35-hour encampment. For some of them it was their third or fourth year.

Yet, I became curious when one of the first in line said she was getting a gift for her aunt. Was there something going on beyond simply getting a good deal for oneself?

I think so.

I was even more optimistic when, the next morning, I heard the account from a son of ours who helped our friend in the chaos of the 4 a.m. to midnight period that Black Friday morning. Friendships made over that 35-hour event came into play as they assisted each other in the mad scramble for consumer electronics.

The recurring thought of them passing the latest electronics to one another as a thundering herd of desperate consumers was about to descend on them has nearly erased my recall of the story of the woman pepper-spraying her Black Friday "competitors" in a Walmart.

Thus in a way, those campers-turned-cooperative-shoppers in Silverdale were also game-changers.

We need to see more of both such inspiring leaps and cooperative passes.

Returning to politics, I pondered what if — when Gov. Perry had his forgetful moment a couple of weeks ago, the others on the debate stand had helped him out? While the self-centered advocate in each of us shouts, "Hell no!" — if we reflect, we realize that we have more in common in such a absent-minded moment than that which separates us.

The hurdling over an opponent is an individual effort easily inspiring in our age of individualism. But even more inspiring of confidence in the future is the mental image of that scene in Best Buy when newly minted friends helped one another.

Perhaps our politicians should have been in that Best Buy that early morning — just watching.

Then it might dawn on them to try their own form of forward pass:

"As I pass you the tax reform that makes the code even more fair and progressive, thanks for passing me that real cut in dependency-inducing entitlements."

Ah, now there's a leap of faith, to dream of such game-changing passes between our leaders.